Waterloo helmet, part 2

When I posted last about about my Waterloo helmets, they looked like this:

The most obvious omission at that points was the terminals at the tips of the horns. The British Museum claims that the originals were cast in situ, but that sounded awfully risky, so I opted to raise them from sheet and solder them in place. Here are the four of them, after sanding:

After mounting the terminals, only trim remained – and plenty of decorative rivets. Each helmet also had six hatched disks covered in vitreous enamel incorporated into the repoussé designs. This is where the two helmets began to diverge – one got transparent red enamel, so that the fine hatching was still visible through the glass, and the other got opaque red. The helmet with transparent enamel was left in an oxidized state, and the one with opaque enamel was hand-polished.

Here is a comparison of how they turned out:

And close-ups showing the colour and texture contrasts the different choices made. I would be hard-pressed to say which I prefer! How about you? Feel free to leave a comment!

Jeffrey Hildebrandt

Thank you, David. I wasn’t able to find any examples of transparent red enamel on Celtic artefacts, either. I remain curious as to why the disks were so carefully hatched when the opaque enamel completely obliterated the effect. Any insight?

David Roper

Hi Jeffrey ,I have my suspicions that the hatched cells were to help the enamel hold on to the bronze. lots of (celtic) horse harness fittings and hanging bowls have deep scratches in a cross hatched style in the cells where the enamel has been.